UPDATE – I origninally titled this post ‘Conn Saxophone Manufacturing – By The Numbers’. After some feedback and review, however, it becamse clearer that the data in CONNsortia is not completely randomized. The saxophones in the galleries here come from many other internet galleries, along with for sale listings across the globe. Therefore, this data more closely represents the ‘survivors’ vs. the true manufacturing data. For example, it is well known that many Conn-O-Saxes were destroyed by Conn, and only 32 or so are known today. So, I retitled this post ‘Vintage Conn Saxophones – By The Numbers’. I will update the data from time to time as the collection grows to see if any new or interesting trends can be seen.
As CONNsortia continues to grow, some statistics start to come out of the population of examples we have in the Chronnological Gallery.
With a sample size of 1,325 unique saxophones (as of this posting) on the site now, and using serial numbers 0-1,000,000 (1895-1962) which is what we track, as the population, we get data that yeilds a 99% Confidence Level with a <4% margin of error.
Below is a graph showing distribution of each saxophone (sopranino through bass) in numbers on the site and as a percentage of the popluation.
Numbers are based on what we have collected and have images for on CONNsortia (note, we know there are more than 12 Conn-O-Saxs out there, but don’t have pictures so not counted).
Some things are not surprising…
– there are more altos than anything else, then tenors.
Some things are a bit more interesting…
– Fewer sopraninos than any other horn
– More C melodies than baris (emphasizes just how many C melodies they made in their heyday).
– About as many C sopranos as F Mezzos
If you take out the ‘oddballs’, C/F pitched instruments and sopraninos, and combine curved and straight sopranos, you get the graph below. Again, not too surprising.
Another interesting set of data, however…by finish.
In the grand scheme of things, one could take away that gold plated horns were not as ‘rare’ as they are today. CONNsortia most certainly has more NWI/NWII horns than later, post-war horns, which are much more skewed to lacquered instruments of course. Both silver and gold plated horns drop off at ~336K (~1950), with only 3 entries of silver past this point. However, the Chronnological gallery only contains 78 entries past the 336K gold example, or 6% of the population.
One could also argue that the gold and silver plated horns before their cost cutting demise were cared for more and survived better than raw brass or older lacquered horns.
